Putting Political Litmus Tests In Your Dating App Bio Is A Red Flag

When people only want political 'discussions' that confirm their biases, they make the vulnerability that relationships require impossible.

Digital castration: Why real men should ditch dating apps



“It’s convenient, but I like to see the things I’m buying in person before I spend my money on them.”

This is one of the most common complaints about the rise of Amazon and same-day delivery services. After all, we want to try on a pair of jeans before we buy them or physically see the apples at the grocery store so we don’t get bruised ones.

Dating and marriage should be a beautiful, loving process. But online, it becomes as predatory as LinkedIn.

But why doesn’t this same principle apply to dating?

In the digital age, online dating has become the standard method of meeting for adults seeking a serious relationship. Research shows that 10% of married adults in the U.S. met their spouses on a dating app, with that number rising to nearly 20% for those under 30. Further, 53% of people under 30 have used a dating app at some point.

This trend is no longer a rare, last-ditch attempt to find a partner, but has become the overwhelmingly normalized expectation for meeting a significant other.

'Love' on demand

At first glance, online dating seems harmless, if not beneficial.

It allows people to distinguish religious beliefs, physique preferences, and long-term relationship goals through a quick swipe through someone’s profile. This convenience can help prevent the awkward incompatibility of a butcher asking out a vegan.

But the cost of this commodity is authenticity. Fairy tales and rom-coms have a reputation for their tacky love-at-first-sight stories, where two people's eyes meet, someone tells a good joke, and a spark is lit between them. Many people's parents and grandparents met their spouses this way. For generations, high school sweethearts and chance encounters were the start of a typical love story.

The problem with online dating apps is that they take the humanity out of relationships. Individuals are trying to sell themselves, so they spend time crafting carefully manicured versions of themselves. They edit photos, reuse their friends’ witty one-liners, and leave out unattractive imperfections. Online dating is much more akin to a game of "Sims," where people become characters with hand-selected features who lack any shortcomings. Tinder users report going on two to four dates per week, often with different potential partners.

The process has become impersonal, with users trying to meet as many potential matches as possible in a desperate attempt to find someone who fits their desires.

Beta mode, activated

This detached style of relationship-building has completely removed masculinity from dating.

It begins with a lack of courage. Dating apps remove the age-old anxiety of just going up and talking to her. Men no longer have to initiate face-to-face contact. Instead, they can send half-hearted text messages behind the comfort of their phones.

It’s a small change, but it has meaningful impacts. It symbolizes waning gallantry.

The removal of physical interaction creates a disparity between reality and fiction. About 57% of women under 30 have received unsolicited explicit messages on dating apps. Without the corporeal link between two individuals, it becomes much easier for men to jump into the murky waters of unchecked vulgarity. The male attributes of confidence and leadership are used in perverted ways that ruin the chances of building meaningful relationships as ordained by God.

It’s not the fault of men.

This is the exploitative nature of online dating. Dating and marriage should be a beautiful, loving process. But online, it becomes as predatory as LinkedIn.

Seeking out a partner should be about finding someone with similar values, shared experiences, and who gives you butterflies. Instead, online dating turns the process into another networking system. People must pull from a handful of photos, a bit of basic information, and a few brief sentences about hobbies to sum up their entire being.

This is why online dating looking a lot like online shopping. Now, people swipe left for the most insignificant offenses, which Gen Z calls "the Ick." It's a superficial process that doesn’t rely on creating a genuine connection. It only fuels the ego.

Death of duty

Online dating, however, does result in a significant number of long-term serious relationships — but fewer and fewer marriages.

As growing numbers of young people turn to apps to find their partners, marriage rates among this group have significantly fallen. Worse, the proportion of young couples who have children has reached almost historic lows in the U.S.

Traditionally, men have always been the leaders in a relationship. They’re the ones who get down on one knee; they’re the ones tasked with protecting and providing for their families. Online dating slowly chips away at cultivating these types of men.

Relationships are built on responsibility. Without the authority of masculinity, these relationships are increasingly less fruitful. People are more likely to live with their partners without ever getting married. And if a couple do marry, they’re less likely to have children.

The burden of responsibility is cast aside because masculinity’s value has been degraded.

The sacred chase

Familial relationships are crucial to maintaining a healthy, balanced society. They are the building blocks of communities, the biblically ordained gift that structures Western civilization.

As online dating becomes the norm, it hides crucial elements of the human spirit. For all of human history, men learned to overcome their fear of the beautiful girl rejecting them by holding on to the hope that she might agree to a date. The uneasiness allowed for something holy to arise.

But the self-satisfaction created by flipping through people's profiles is the mark of an age held hostage by technology. If you don’t want the online food delivery service to leave bruised fruit on your doorstep, you should go to the farmers' market and pick some out for yourself.

Maybe while you’re there, you’ll walk by someone who seems nice and get the courage to go up and talk to her.

Why You Should Let Someone Set You Up (Even If It Sounds Horrible)

Matchmaking has been made to sound like it’s for the desperate, but letting someone introduce you to a potential spouse isn’t giving up. It’s growing up.

11 teens face felony charges for allegedly using dating apps to lure, beat men as part of viral social media trend



Authorities in Illinois said 11 teens engaged in a viral social media trend of using dating apps to lure and beat men. The teenagers are facing felony charges for their alleged assaults.

The Mount Prospect Police Department said in a statement that a group of 11 teens attacked two men over the summer.

'We are asking parents to take these incidents as an opportunity to talk with their teenage children about the seriousness of actively participating in these types of trends they see on social media.'

A 41-year-old man told police a group of teens battered him around 9:45 p.m. July 8 in the parking lot of a business in Mount Prospect, roughly 20 miles northwest of Chicago.

"The victim related that he had utilized an online dating app to arrange to meet a person at that location," the Mount Prospect Police Department stated. "After arriving, the victim related that he was approached by a group of teenage males who confronted him verbally and battered him. Teenagers in the group also damaged the victim’s vehicle. The victim related he fled in the vehicle and was eventually able to get away from the group of teenagers, who followed him in their vehicles."

Within just 10 minutes of the first reported attack, a 23-year-old man contacted police about an assault that purportedly occurred about a mile away from the first alleged attack.

The second alleged victim said he was expecting to meet a person at the location where a group of teenagers reportedly battered him. He also claimed the teens damaged his vehicle, including slashing the tires of his car.

The alleged victim went to a nearby home, after which the Mount Prospect Fire Department transported him to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Police did not reveal which dating app the suspects used to allegedly lure the men.

Detectives with the Mount Prospect Police Department used surveillance video from the areas of the alleged attacks to identify possible suspects. Following an investigation, police determined that 11 juveniles participated in one or both of the alleged attacks.

Overall, 53 felony charges were brought against the juvenile suspects — including aggravated battery with great bodily harm, criminal damage to property, and mob action.

NBC News reported that one of the teen suspects was hit with two felony counts of hate crime charges for purportedly using "a racial and another derogatory term" during one of the alleged attacks, police said.

Police did not reveal the racial slur that the suspect allegedly shouted.

The Cook County State's Attorney’s Office approved all of the charges against the juvenile suspects.

None of the suspects' identities were revealed because all of them were minors. All of the suspects were males, 10 of whom were 17 years old; one was 16.

Police said all of the suspects turned themselves in last month and were transported to Chicago's Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.

The suspects allegedly informed investigators that they got the idea for the alleged attacks from a viral social media trend they saw online.

“We are asking parents to take these incidents as an opportunity to talk with their teenage children about the seriousness of actively participating in these types of trends they see on social media,” said Mount Prospect Police Chief Mike Eterno.

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Circe Says: Ancient wisdom for modern problems



Circe is an ancient Greek minor goddess who spends her days on X, chronicling the late-stage American empire and dispensing advice on life and love in the digital era. You can submit your advice questions to her directly at Circe @vocalcry.

Let's say you wanted to escape a cult. Let’s say the cult is academia, to keep things abstract. How would you do it?

When you consider that the number of people with freshly minted PhDs every year far exceeds the number of people who join the Church of Scientology, it is worth asking how academia continues to find young recruits willing to give away years of their productive lives to engage in esoteric rituals in near poverty and social isolation for a slim chance at life-of-the-mind transcendence.

The one quality that most cult members share is that they’re looking for an all-powerful mentor (or, in your case, a dissertation advisor) — a figurative daddy who will reward them when they’re good and scold them when they’re bad. Academics have this in spades. They’ve never developed an identity outside of being the teacher’s pet, and they struggle to make decisions without envisioning what grade they will get on their report card in life.

Leaving academia involves recognizing that you’re in a cult and learning to accept that there is no final report card. The only grade you’ll get in life is pass/fail, which will only be awarded to you by a higher power. If you can come to terms with this, you might have a chance at escape. And if you can’t, joining a tech startup is always an option.

I have read many 'red-pill' books to try to understand what men want. They all seem to be aimed at manipulating a woman’s desire for love to extract intimacy, only to lose interest in the woman afterward. I am losing hope about relationships and genuinely questioning why these men express that their version of true love is harems and cheating. Do any men truly love women? Is this really what love is about?

A healthy relationship with both parents and a normal adolescent romantic awakening: no “red-pill” guru had both. Like all ideologies constructed around a master narrative to explain the world, “red-pill” concepts are founded on a grain of truth and distorted to massive proportions to attract a target audience. In this sense, the “red pill” is no different from Marxism, radical feminism, or any other ideology that preys on minds desperate for clarity in a world that is full of complexity.

It is true that, on average, there are biological and psychological differences between men and women that require a theory of mind to appreciate fully and that being aware of these differences can help bridge the gap between the sexes, especially in the context of a relationship. The “red pill” organizes some of these differences into a seemingly coherent worldview that serves as a basis to justify the manipulation of women by men to often unsavory ends.

It is worth noting, however, that every single “red-pill” guru eventually repents and comes to the conclusion that a monogamous relationship with one woman is more fulfilling than living like a degenerate. Dan Bilzerian is only the most recent in a long line of “red-pill” prodigal sons — without exception, all of these men eventually reach the same conclusion.

It is also worth noting that the average well-socialized, well-adjusted man will never consume red-pill content, let alone create red-pill content. This latter pool of men is the one you should be fishing in when looking for love, which is a very real and wonderful thing. I cannot tell you where or when you will find your Prince Charming, but I can categorically tell you that he will not have internet brainworms.

Are you wasting a girl's time by continuing to date her if, after six months, you can't yet see a future involving marriage but otherwise have no good reason to break up? If so, how to best end things without sounding mean? If not, how long do you wait to see if marital visions develop?

The short answer is yes, and the long answer is also yes.

Most men know when they meet the woman they want to build a future with early on, usually much earlier than six months. If it hasn’t developed, it isn’t likely to develop with the passage of time. If you are looking for a wife (presumably, she’s looking for a husband), then not seeing a future involving marriage IS a good reason to break up. Not only is it a good reason, it’s the best reason.

Every day you spend with a person you don’t see a future with is a day you’re robbing from both of you [time] that can be spent either in search of a spouse or in the company of that spouse. It is never pleasant to end things, but be honest about not seeing a future even if you can only offer vague reasons as to why. A woman will be far less upset about being rejected after six months than about being strung along for years only to eventually break up anyway and hear that you married another woman that you met only six months ago.

Console yourself with the thought that 10 years from now, you’ll both be happily married to other people and that you’re taking a step today to ensure that future. And if the thought of ending up with other people instead of one other makes you sad and regretful, maybe it’s worth reconsidering and buying a ring. But please — no moissanite.

I have a raging desire to set my boss on fire, and I’m exhausted by this and want it to end. How do I get over my desire to set my boss on fire?

Buy a ticket to Burning Man and superimpose your boss’s face onto the burning effigy with the Apple Vision Pro. Or you can just find a new job.

Circe, how do I get over relentless heartbreak?

Barthes and Stendhal exhausted many words on this very dilemma to no avail, but as a 1000+-year-old goddess (though who’s counting), I’ve had centuries to test out various theories (turning your beloved’s object of affection into a sea monster does NOT work), and I’m here to offer practical solutions.

First, give yourself a predetermined period to grieve. Watch sad movies, vent to anyone who will listen, read "The Sorrows of Young Werther" — whatever makes all of those melancholy feelings bubble to the surface. Don’t bury ... them; tragedy cleanses the soul. But you MUST be disciplined about the cut-off time for this period.

Second, do not have any contact with this person. Hide any and all evidence of their existence. Do not stalk their social media. Do not ask your friends about them. For all intents and purposes, you must disappear them from your life.

Third, make a list of everything you dislike about them, even if it’s totally ridiculous minutiae — their shoes, their eyebrows, anything that inspires even mild distaste. Anytime you reminisce about them, read the list. Read it again. Then eat a cookie. This is no longer the time for philosophical musings. You must not be above subjecting yourself to operant conditioning.

Fourth, find a way to distract yourself with something that gives you purpose: work, friends, hobbies, etc. Getting in shape never hurts. Keep busy in a way that feels productive.

If you follow this plan without cheating, you are guaranteed to feel better in about six months. Trust me, if I can get over Glaucus, you can get over anyone.

These studies suggest we might be VERY wrong about Gen Z



Gen Z – those born between the years 1997 and 2012 – get a bad rap. They’re often characterized as lazy, entitled, chronically anxious tech addicts.

And while there may be some truth to that stereotype, statistics show that Zoomers are actually better than we’ve been led to believe.

Isabel Brown, a Gen Z author and conservative voice, shared some pleasantly surprising news with Dave Rubin about America’s most challenging generation.

Due to smart devices and advancing technology, modern society has adapted to be heavily virtual, and apparently Gen Z is tired of it.

“Gen Z is saying, ‘You know, we want a little bit more than that. We want more substance; we want more purpose,'” says Isabel, adding that “dating is maybe the best example of what that looks like.”

“There are several articles that have come out in the last few months about how Match, the group which owns Tinder and Hinge and several other competing companies, is freaking out about how to retain Gen Z as a customer base because 90%+ of us say we’ve had horrible experiences on the app,” she explains.

But online dating isn’t the only table Gen Z is turning.

“Gen Z women are overwhelmingly throwing away our birth control because no matter where you fall in the partisan political spectrum [and] no matter what your intimacy life looks like, we realize we're feeling really sick, and we're slowly poisoning ourselves in the process,” says Isabel.

But this next statistic might be the most shocking.

According to “a study that just came out,” “93% of us … still want to get married,” she tells Dave, adding that this is most surprising because we’re currently living “in a time where we have the lowest marriage rate in American history.”

Further, despite what we’ve been told, “Gen Z is actually breaking more conservative than at least the two previous generations,” which is the crux of Isabel’s newest book, “The End of the Alphabet.”

“When I say [conservative], it doesn’t necessarily mean the red MAGA hat,” she says. Rather, it means “ culturally embracing traditional values.”

“What does every young generation have in common throughout all of human history?” she asks. “We want to rebel against the people who came before.”

For Zoomers, “‘sticking it to the man’ is quite literally believing there is such a thing as objectivism. It means wanting to get married instead of sleep with as many people as humanly possible and follow the advice of the manosphere or the radical feminism community. It's wanting to have kids in a society that's begging you ‘don't have kids for the sake of your career, for the sake of the environment, for the sake of your personal life.”’

Even the hustle and bustle of city life, which generally attracts a younger crowd, is becoming less desirable.

Studies show that “we’re moving out of big cities” because “we want more suburban or rural areas to reconnect with nature,” says Isabel, adding that younger generations are also “eating real food in a time where everything is hyper-processed or full of chemicals or even grown in a laboratory.”

But perhaps most shocking of all is that Gen Z is embracing the idea of a higher power again. To hear more about this unexpected renewed interest in God despite “our hyper-atheistic society,” watch the clip below.


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Fertility Rates Are Doomed, So You’ve Got To Do Your Part

Many Americans wanted kids but couldn’t make it happen. Save yourself a load of deathbed regret and do not ignore the voice calling you to become a parent!

Survey shows OnlyFans DOOMS relationships



Feminists will tell you that sex work is real work, but your partner might not see it that way.

Lauren Chen reports that a recently released survey demonstrates that being an OnlyFans creator does have negative consequences on your romantic life — even though the average creator is only making about $180 a month.

"If you guys are not yet familiar with OnlyFans,” Chen says, “I admire you.”

OnlyFans is one of the only platforms available that allows adult content, so while it started as a platform similar to SubscribeStar or even YouTube, it has become nearly synonymous with pornographic content.

A survey from XFans Hub asked over 500 OnlyFans creators if they have “found it challenging to maintain a dating life while being an OnlyFans creator,” and the answers were damning.

According to the survey, 21% of creators said it was “not challenging at all,” while 32% reported that it was “somewhat challenging,” and a whopping 47% answered “Yes, it has been very challenging.”

“To be clear, that’s 79% of OnlyFans creators” who “admit that having an OnlyFans account has made their dating lives at least somewhat challenging.”

Chen says that “the assumptions that modern feminism” operates under would have us thinking, “'No it shouldn’t be challenging to maintain a dating life' while being an OnlyFans creator" — but that’s “just one of the many lies that modern feminism has sold women.”

Chen points out that there might be some creators who might not be “looking for a relationship right now,” but “in the future, having had an OnlyFans account is still something that will affect you going forward.”

“So, ask yourself,” she adds, “is it worth prostituting yourself online — degrading yourself online — for on average $180 a month?”


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To enjoy more of Lauren’s pro-liberty, pro-logic, and pro-market commentary on social and political issues, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Woke Texas-based dating app companies Bumble and Match create funds to pay for abortions



Two Texas-based dating app companies have created funds to pay for abortions for women seeking to end the life of their unborn children after the Supreme Court declined to block the state's pro-life fetal heartbeat law.

The Texas law, Senate Bill 8, went into effect on Tuesday after the high court declined to take emergency action to block it. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court justices voted 5-4 to allow the law to remain in effect. The law bans abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, the time at which an unborn child has developed a heartbeat.

Abortion advocates opposing the law complain that most women might not even know they're pregnant at six weeks. They say Texas has effectively banned abortions within the state and done so unconstitutionally, based on Roe v. Wade's precedent.

In response to the court's decision, the Austin-based company Bumble announced on social media it would create a "relief fund" to help women and "people across the gender spectrum' seek abortions in the state.

"Bumble is women-founded and women-led, and from day one we've stood up for the most vulnerable. We'll keep fighting against regressive laws like #SB8," the company said.

 

Bumble is women-founded and women-led, and from day one we’ve stood up for the most vulnerable. We'll keep fighting… https://t.co/zp0K8KJlhq

— Bumble (@bumble) 1630535500.0 
 

The CEO of Dallas-based company Match Group Inc. is also creating a fund to pay for employees to seek abortions. An internal memo from CEO Shar Dubey, first reported by Bloomberg, informs employees that while Match "generally does not take political stands unless it is relevant to our business ... this particular law is so regressive to the cause of women's rights that I felt compelled to speak publicly about my personal views."

Match Group Inc. owns some of the most popular dating apps and websites, including Tinder and OKCupid.

Dubey said she "immigrated to America from India over 25 years ago and I have to say, as a Texas resident, I am shocked that I now live in a state where women's reproductive laws are more regressive than most of the world, including India."

She told employees that the fund, which she's creating out of her own pocket, will help cover the costs for employees and dependents that want to seek abortions outside of Texas.

According to some estimates, Texas' heartbeat law will prohibit about 85% of abortions that were legal before it went into effect. The law has a unique enforcement mechanism, relying on private citizens to use civil lawsuits to bring anyone helping to procure an illegal abortion procedure into court for up to $10,000.